Instant Immersion Spanish - Advanced

Rating:
Summary: horrible!
Review: I have purchased several Spanish CD programs. This by far is the worst. The dialog is boring and difficult to follow. Worst of all is the primary speaker. She is not a native Spanish speaker, and her gringo accent is bad enough that advanced students will have trouble understanding her. This product certainly does not live up to its fancy marketing. Everything I have purchased from Living Language is way better.

Rating:
Summary: So far so good
Review: I just listened to the first 3 CDs of Instant Immersion Spanish - Advanced. So far, I am pleasantly surprised. This is my third "Immersion" product and is by far the best of the three I've tried. (Don't bother with the PC software. I returned it). The other was the beginner cassettes. Not bad, but don't be fooled by there being 8 or 10 tapes. Each tape has only 15 minutes on each side. They could have used only 3 tapes with 40 minutes each side!! This company likes to compare number of tapes with their competitors rather than hours of instruction which is ridiculous. Its like selling a 32 ounce box of cereal with 3 cornflakes in it. The Advanced version claims 9 hours of instruction however. Which seems very fair.

The conversations are excellent. The pace is nice and quick. My retention has been very good.

My only gripes are:

1. I wish they would get rid of the background guitar music. It is very pleasant, but it distracts from the conversations somewhat. I need to totally concentrate on what I am learning. Also, the music is too relaxing. It actually puts me to sleep!

2. I don't like the way the narrator talks out of one speaker and the spanish dialogue is out of the other speaker. I feel like I'm at a tennis match when I listen to these CDs. I don't see how it helps the learning process to hear everything "mono" and alternating speakers. Very distracting, espectially when you first start listening.

3. My listening comprehension has improved greatly, but the CDs don't allow for any time for you to respond at all. So there's no real "interaction" or speaking exercises.

4. The narrator is very good, but very monotone. Again, the "put to sleep factor". The Spanish speakers are very lively however.

5. Since this is supposed to be "advanced" I would have preferred more speaking of spanish by the narrator. Example, when he says "lesson 1", and "discussion 1", he should say it in Spanish.

6. A transcript would be nice, a verb chart, vocabulary list. Something visual to enhance the learning experience.

In conclusion, for the price you can't go too wrong. You should develop very good comprehension/listening skills. You will learn a lot of vocabulary and phrases. Verb congugation is discussed. I definitely recommend this product based on price. I would call this more "intermediate" than "Advanced". Don't listen to these if you are tired or lying down in bed. You will be asleep in 5 minutes.